by: the Common Constitutionalist

I’ve expressed my perplexity with the present Vicar of Christ in the past and it doesn’t appear I’ll be jumping on his band-wagon anytime soon.

By all accounts, Pope Francis is a good guy. Of course he’s a good guy – he’s the head of the Catholic Church – revered by millions! But, as I’ve stated before – I’m not Catholic – so to me, he’s just a man – flawed like me and you.

That being said – I have been tough on him in the past and as I am not Catholic, when he says or does something I consider to be a bit off (in my opinion), I call him on it – the way I would anyone else, or anyone might do of me.

Among the many faults we conservatives find of the left is their use of moral relativism. Being that the Pope appears to have liberal and socialist leanings, his use of moral relativism should not be surprising. But this doesn’t seem to jibe with a laymen’s view of the Catholic Church – which has always been culturally or socially conservative.

Yet this Pope has waded into a number of hot social and political topics since being elevated and most of his opinions have taken a decidedly liberal bent – and this one is no different.

On a plane ride back to the Vatican from a trip to Poland, Pope Francis revealed his thoughts on Islamic violence. He said: “I think it is not right to identify Islam with violence. This is not right and this is not true.” read more

If you are a regular reader (even if you’re not), you may have seen me use the the word “Progressive” (in political terms) as a synonym for liberal, which it is.

In fact, during the early Twentieth century, as the term “Progressive” developed a negative connotation, they simply changed it to liberal. We now see, with a negative reaction to the term “Liberal”, they are reverting back to progressive. Neat trick. Interestingly, the founders considered themselves “Classical Liberals”.

After speaking to a few people, I realize I have never really explained “progressive” properly – what it means & why political progressives think the way they do.

To do this I thought it might be instructive to go back and look at one of the founders of the American progressive movement, president Woodrow Wilson, using excerpts from one of his more famous speeches, “What is Progress?“.

In his speech Wilson said, “We think of the future, not the past, as the more glorious time in comparison with which the present is nothing. Progress, development-those are modern words. The modern idea is to leave the past and press onward to something new.”

So far, progress sounds great, or does it? Does progress really mean to leave the past, forget the past, and press on to something new and no doubt glorious?

One could argue, unsuccessfully, that this is not what he meant. In his speech, he will reveal, this is indeed what he meant.

Wilson continues, “What attitude shall progressives take toward the existing order, toward those institutions of conservatism, the Constitution, the laws, and the courts?… Are those thoughtful men who fear that we are now about to disturb the ancient foundations of our institutions justified in their fear?”

You’re darn right they were justified in their fear!

You will notice how Wilson is trying to separate himself and progressives from the founders by describing the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence as old dusty, ancient foundations, as if they were crafted on stone tablets thousands of years ago. read more

Go back and read the opening sentences of your letter. Read them again. Then read the rest of your letter. Then read it again. Try to find a single instance where you referred to your dad as a human being, a person, or a man. There isn’t one. read more

According to exit polling data, in both the 2008 and 2012 elections, Millennials (young adults 18 to 33) were a reliably leftist demographic, both in their voting and their views. Now, it appears that – even though they remain decidedly liberal on political and social issues – this influential group of Americans is up for grabs in the 2014 and 2016 elections. That is to say that no specific politician or ideology can count on their support.

The Pew Research Center’s just-released survey reveals that as they move into adulthood, the Millennial generation is “at or near the highest levels of political and religious disaffiliation recorded for any generation in the quarter-century that the Pew Research Center has been polling on these topics.” In fact, Pew reports that half of that age group claims to be politically independent, and almost a third see very little difference between the two major political parties. read more

If there were as many “fiscal conservatives” as there are people who claim to be, it is hard to see how Republicans would lose as many elections as they do.

One frequently hears this political self-identification: “I’m socially liberal, but fiscally conservative.” Or, “If the Republicans weren’t conservative on so many social issues, I would vote Republican.” Or, “It’s too bad the Christian Right dominates the Republican Party. I would vote for the Republicans on fiscal issues, but I can’t stand the religious right.”

The same sentiment holds among many inside the Republican Party. Most secular conservatives and the libertarian wing of the party agree: Let’s jettison all this social stuff — most prominently opposition to same-sex marriage and abortion, and this unnecessary commitment to religion — and just stand for small government and personal liberty. read more

The liberal mind may be the most illogical and oxymoronic thing on the planet. They are constantly trying to “improve” the human condition by affecting human nature via legislation and regulation.

The problem is that human nature is what it is. Humans aren’t perfect. That’s what God intended and no governmental organization has been or will be able to regulate or legislate that out of us.

Oh, they’ll try and for a while it may even appear successful. But eventually that utopian dream will be exposed as the nightmare that it is and come crashing down.

The question is: why does it always have to escalate to the point of “crashing”?

That, as everything else, always comes down to human nature. Liberals feel, they don’t think. They are also quite myopic, singularly focused, that is, they don’t see the big picture. It may be that they are incapable of doing so, and because of that, they don’t see it as a shortcoming. read more

The College of Cardinals has chosen a new Pope. Okay, now what? What do those who choose to call themselves Catholic do now?

Evidently the new guy, Pope Francis, is a theological conservative, for want of a better term. I guess we will classify him as a theological traditionalist, that way I won’t offend liberal Catholics.

I am not a Roman Catholic, nor any kind of Catholic. I do know broadly, as do many non-Catholics, a few of the basic tenets, or rules of Catholicism. They are against abortion, euthanasia, women priests and homosexual marriage. There are, I’m sure, many more Catholic tenets, but those four are evidently the hot button topics of contention in today’s Catholic Church.

As a non-Catholic, my obvious question to those who are, is why are these contentious issues within the church?

Any traditional religion has a certain set of, carved in stone rules that a practicing member of said religion must follow to remain in that churches good standing.

Catholics, Baptists, Mormons, Muslims all have rules that must be followed. So I am both confused and amused at the number of reports asking whether the new pope would be more likely to moderate the church’s views.

Well, as I said, I am not a Catholic, but I do know enough not to ask God to moderate. Why would anyone think that the Pope would come in and just start turning the whole religion upside down? Did anyone really think that the new Pope would get up and announce that the church will now be pro-abortion? Of course any thinking person would never expect such a thing.

But of course we know, at least to my regular readers, that American liberals are liberals first and whatever else after that. Whether they claim to be Catholic or some other religion they are still liberals first. That is why, for example, liberal American Jews will vote in a president and administration that is clearly no friend of Israel. Liberal first, then Jew; easy as that.

As we know, liberals don’t think, they feel. If one doesn’t think about the absurdity of the statement, one could comfortably ask if the church will now support abortion or women priests. It is not a completely ludicrous question, unless you think about it first. But with liberals fairness is everything. It is unfair in these modern times not to allow homosexuals to wed within the church.

That is only a reasonable assumption if you are an à la carte Catholic, or just a liberal who happen to be brought up Catholic. For those who don’t know, an à la carte Catholic is one who feels he or she may pick and choose the rules they wish to adhere to and let the rest go. Some call them cafeteria Catholics.

Now many think liberalism is a political ideology. It is, in a way. But it is also a religion, albeit a warp one. Think about it. Religion is faith; some would say blind faith. Leftists contend that a belief in a higher power, God, defies logic yet their blind faith in the myth of man-made global warming is incontrovertible. They have their own set of unwavering rules. You must be pro-abortion, you must believe in Global Warming, homosexual marriage and wealth distribution.

So with all their rigid ideology, why do liberals assume the Catholic Church can and will reverse its core principles? Well, that’s easy. Because they want it to and it is unfair not to. It’s all about the fairness.

For more than a century, liberals, progressives, or however you care to classify them, have been changing and usurping the rule of law; the Constitution.

They claim it to be a living document and should now more reflect the modern era. Its rules applied and made sense a few centuries ago but those quaint ideals have hardly kept up with the “progress” and enlightenment of modern man.

So with a belief that the basic tenets that govern our country should and can be changed on a whim, so to it is easy to superimpose that same want to change the church, for it also does not reflect the enlightenment of the modern liberal.

And that is why many today can surmise that a new Pope can and should alter the Catholic Church tenets.

Maxine Waters is a complete socialist disaster. She does have something going for her that practically no other marxist demonstrates; honesty. Or maybe it’s stupidity. Most radical leftists can’t be honest about their views or intentions. She, however, quite often let’s it slip, just how radical her and her party are.

In 2009, she slipped up and revealed who she was:

And just last Sunday, speaking with Roland Martin she stating that President Obama has “put in place an organization with the kind of database that no one has ever seen before in life,” which “will have information about everything on every individual…” “The President has put in place an organization that contains the kind of database that no one has ever seen before in life. That’s going to be very, very powerful…” That doesn’t sound forboding or KGBesque, now does it?

The Left Continues to Revise America’s History

One of the many unfortunate effects of Barack Obama’s re-election is that it will empower the radical left to continue revising America’s history. The fastest way to undermine a country is to undermine its history, and the best place to begin is in the nation’s classrooms where pliable young minds are easily influenced.

This is precisely what the left has been doing for decades, and with evident success. The left has made great strides in undermining the family, taking over the public square, and dominating education at all levels. But some of its most effective work has been in revising America’s history.

Russian philosopher Alexander Solzhenitzyn said: “To destroy a people you must first sever their roots.” Patrick Buchanan said: “To create a ‘new people,’ the agents of our cultural revolution must first create a new history; and that project is well advanced.”

In 1992 that bastion of liberal thought, the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), received a two-million-dollar grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the U.S. Department of Education to develop new standards for history books for grades five through twelve. UCLA completed this assignment in 1997. Since that time, its standards have had the intended effect. UCLA’s standards for history books for public school children have resulted in the following:

No mention in history books of such American luminaries as Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, or the Wright Brothers. It is the lives of exceptional Americans such as these, among many other factors, that validate the concept of American exceptionalism. Consequently, to undermine the concept, liberals must remove any reference to exceptional acts and exceptional people in American history.

The founding dates of the Sierra Club and the National Organization for Women are given special significance. In truth, the only thing that warrants inclusion of these organizations in history books is that they are considered sacred institutions by the left.

Instructions for teachers concerning how to teach the unit which covers the traitor Alger Hiss and the spies Ethel and Julius Rosenberg encourages leeway to teach the unit either way. In other words, teachers are given the leeway to teach the unit as if Hiss was not a traitor and the Rosenbergs were innocent. This is the same Alger Hiss who was convicted by a jury on the basis of hard evidence, evidence that since his conviction has been validated many times over by further discoveries. And these are the same Rosenbergs who gave America’s atom-bomb secrets to Joseph Stalin.

The Constitutional Convention is not even mentioned. One of the reasons for this is that the deliberations of America’s founders as recorded in numerous documents such as the Federalist Papers as well as those of the anti-federalists are clearly at odds with today’s liberal orthodoxy. The tactic of the left is simple. If the founder’s views do not reinforce those of the left, eliminate any reference to their views in history books.

George Washington’s presidency is not mentioned nor is his famous farewell address. Rather than learn about the two terms of our country’s first president—two terms in which everything Washington did was precedent setting—students are encouraged to develop an imaginary dialogue between an Indian Leader and General Washington at the end of the Revolutionary War. What students are supposed to learn and how students are supposed to benefit from this hypothetical dialogue is not explained.

The Soviet Union is commended for its great strides in space exploration, but America’s moon landing is not mentioned.

Teachers are urged to have students conduct a mock trial for John D. Rockefeller of Standard Oil. No mention is made of the fact that the homes of most of the students are heated by energy derived from petroleum and the gasoline in the cars driven by teachers comes from petroleum.

The new history standards developed by UCLA have had far-reaching effects. Look at any history book written for public school students in the K-12 system and you will be appalled at what is included and what is not.

There are now history books being used in America classrooms that give more coverage to Madonna than to George Washington. Further, America is often portrayed in the way that Barack Obama views it: as a villainous nation bent on world dominance, imperialism, the perpetuation of slavery, and a variety of other evils.

What is less likely to be found is any positive coverage concerning a Constitution that guarantees the rights of everyone, including liberals who are bent on the destruction of America as the founders envisioned it.

I’ve been asked that question a lot today, by people in the office, the UPS driver that delivers our packages, some folks at the gym, even customers.

The title of this article sums it up, but not fully.

People like free stuff and most figure that Santa Obama can get them more than Romney the Grinch (before his heart grew three sizes that day).

Taking a look at some of the exit poll data can give us a clue, at least somewhat, of why people voted the way they did.

A solid majority of those who voted for Obama still blame George W. Bush for the economic problems this country faces today. I frankly was stunned at this revelation. How could any thinking person blame someone four years prior for the bad economy today? Exit poll respondents claimed that Obama just didn’t have enough time to turn things around.

If I were an exit pollster, I would have asked a simple follow-up question. That being, “How long, then, should, we give the president?” It would’ve been very informative to discover the response. If four years isn’t long enough, just how much time should he get?

As I recall it was just months after George W. Bush took office that the recession, that actually began in Bill Clinton’s final year, was dubbed the Bush recession. Funny, the double standard.

Exit polls also show the Obama auto bailout to be a success. It evidently carried more weight than did Romney’s overwhelming business experience.

Those polled had the impression that Romney wanted to simply drive the auto companies into bankruptcy and dissolve them. They apparently are unaware that bankruptcy can simply mean reorganization and not necessarily dissolution. They were also apparently unaware that GM did in fact go through a managed bankruptcy anyway.

This idea was especially true in Michigan. I would like to ask those polled, in about five years or so, if they still approve of Obama’s auto bailout, knowing that, according to GM’s own president, General Motors has plans to move most of their manufacturing to China.

Regarding jobs, of those polled six in ten that worried about jobs, favored Obama over Romney. This was quite confusing to me knowing that the president has never created a single private sector job.

9 out of 10 blacks voted for Obama while only 6 out of 10 racists (whites) preferred Romney. That’s a rather monolithic voting block for the president.

The only folks I knew of that received 90% of the vote were those like Hugo Chavez and Saddam Hussein.

Other minority groups also preferred Obama to Romney by wide margins.

According to the exit polls, young single women did vote their body parts, being more concerned with contraception and abortion than anything else.

That’s just sad.

At least a full one-third of voters from the ages of 18 to 29 actually believe socialism is preferable to capitalism. The only way one could have such a preference is having never studied or experienced true socialism. I venture to say; most of the 18 to 29-year-old ideologues are still living in their parents’ basements or forced to move back in, due to lack of employment. One could hardly blame the president for that.

The Heritage Foundation has a saying that may be of great solace to many despondent conservatives. It states, “There are no permanent victories, there are no permanent defeats.”

Another question that was asked of me today, rather frequently, was, what do we do now? Was it Romney’s fault? Was it just a sign of the times, changing demographics?

Well, it was all of these, to some extent. For the most part, Mitt Romney ran a fairly good campaign. At times though, it lacked specificity.

See, it is much easier to be a liberal than a conservative. Liberals have never had to really defend their positions. They don’t think; they just feel.

As a conservative, I find myself constantly having to defend the positions that I take and my beliefs. That causes me to think, research and truly understand why I believe what I believe. It’s a lot more difficult to be a conservative. It’s not enough for me to simply say, for instance, that I will stand up for the poor, or I’m for women’s rights. They sound great until you think about them. What do those statements even mean? The answer is that both of those statements mean absolutely nothing. If, however, a liberal politician was to say that to his or her constituents, that would be enough. No explanation would be required.

A conservative could never get away with such a hollow statement, nor should he.

As I see it, the only way that we can bring this country back from the brink of socialism is by education.

Every conservative, in his or her own little corner of the world must find a way to educate at least some of our youth. I say our youth, because most of the adult population that are dyed in the wool liberal will simply not listen. They will shut you out or shut you up.

We need to begin to reeducate our younger generation in the ways of our founding. We must teach them about the Declaration and Constitution and why this country differs from any other. We need to show them how every other form of government or society mankind has ever devised has been tried and failed time and time again. Most have failed with disastrous consequences. We must show them there are no new ideas, just repackaged old ones.

Although it seems like a daunting task, it can be done. It’s like cleaning out your garage. If you look at the job as a whole, you may never start, but if you begin in one corner and just concentrate on section at a time, before you know it, the whole garage is clean.

I personally am going to concentrate on my son’s and their friends. Maybe it will blossom into something larger, maybe it won’t, but something has to be started.